The Polony: Industry and Exploration on Jool's Loneliest Moon

[Wait- Was That Important?]

Have you ever looked up at the night sky and wondered at the big questions of life? Is there anyone else out there in the cosmos?  Are we doomed to die as a single-planet species? Does Jool have too many moons?

 

Wait... what? That's right! JEXA, the Joolian EXploration Association, is working to solve these big issues so you don't need to! When they're not torturing acronyms, JEXA is diligently toiling away to bring Pol's delicious crust and-or mantle to your doorstep! As the smallest and loneliest moon of Jool Pol has few friends willing to come to its defense, thus making it the perfect  victim location for industry-scale strip mining respectful utilization of its available resources.

 

This playthrough takes place in a modded 1.10.1 career mode save with about 40 hours plalytime and 9 years of elapsed in-game. I've already done missions to every planet, two comets, and fully unlocked the tech tree as a result; I find that sort of thing to be generic and so will not focus on those activities in this mission report. Primary mods are Nertea's legendary Near Future suite and Stockalike Station Parts Expansion Redux, not to mention Strategia and the various Contract Pack expansions which are integral to a meaningful career playthrough.

 

The Polony

"Sand Castle", a nuclear-lithium Pol miner designed to harvest 40 kg/s of ore and loft 160 tons of payload to the refinery

"Ion Fairy" a temporary Jool mothership assembled from 4 different modules, deploying a smaller exploration frigate for a tourist contract

"Ion Godspeed", the second of two Nuclear Ion ferries, visits intermediate-period comet Gilong-1 after dropping off two advanced probes at Jool

Program Objectives:

• Establish a refinery in Pol orbit to produce general fuels like LF/O, monoprop, and lithium 
• Construct advanced Pol surface bases to produce exotic fuels like argon, xenon, and enriched uranium
• Build reusable surface-orbit freighters to ship highly refined products from Pol's surface
• Construct a fleet of nuclear lithium MPD tugs to freight cargo and passengers from Kerbin to Pol and back using fast transfer orbits (<1 year each way)
• Fund activites through Tourism Plus contracts to take tourists on flybys and landings of Jool's moons and ISRU extraction contracts to ship ore from Pol
• Support these initiatives using existing infrastructure like the nuclear-ion Fast Crew Ferries and Argon Giant superheavy nuclear propulsion bus
• Redirect intermediate-period H-class comet Gilong-1 around Kerbin using infrastructure staged and supported from Jool

 

 

Edited October 26, 2020 by Wait- Was That Important?